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Then, of course, a Wessel has to attack, killing a chicken. So I had to stay up ALL NIGHT scaring it away from my rabbits! Then one of my bunnies gets entriditous and dies.

And now it's furious September

I find Truffel (my female adult) in Oreo (my male adult)'s cage! So now I'm expecting a litter! Grrrrr..... The only good thing about this, I can't wait to see what the kits look like. Truffel is a black silver marten and Oreo is a broken opal.

Next (I hope) you predator-proof both chickens and rabbits so you don't have to guard them, and so you don't have amorous rabbits playing "your cage or mine?" After that, you learn to deal with things like bot flies so you don't have those high vet bills.

I don't mean to be hard on you, but routine management jobs like these are a big part of raising rabbits or any other livestock. You'll find a lot of the information you need here on RabbitTalk. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

If you would add your location (province, state or country if not in Canada or the United States), it would help us to give you advice that pertains to your part of the world. Many, many rabbit questions are influenced by climate.

That's a mild summer sadly. Welcome to standard small livestock raising outdoors. You better have one heck of a rabbit budget and only a few rabbits if you plan to use exotics/typical pet vets for everything that comes up. Bot fly removal and prevention has been covered on here more than anyone wants to see it. Unfortunately the thought people have been doing their own animal care on farms, learning, and applying the same treatments as vets to different animals and staying up to date on the latest info for decades is not as acceptable today. It gets too hung up in people who fail to do any research and guess (many dead farm cats to ivermectin use) and many of the things I used to treat small animals I was raising in high school are no longer on pet store shelves while they look at you in horror for asking even though it's still all otc and monitored by the FDA. Even when the vets have failings that are still based on dog/cat care and a $200 vet bill far too often does not save a small herbivore if you don't learn a few things like countering GI stasis on your own. Most don't take preventative measures and many don't recognize once the damage starts it commonly doesn't self correct so by the time someone comes back or posts somewhere like here with the sick rabbit it's too late. The otc versions are the same thing the vet has if from a quality source (I get the Australian brand of the same Revolution topical pest treatment) and it just depends if you feel you can measure it or if you can give injections and things like open up abscesses or not. The best solution if you don't have enough experience to be confident is to find a rural/livestock vet willing to back up their knowledge with a little research or other vet consultation on species details and scale down treatment to rabbit size. Many things aren't that rabbit specific. If you aren't doing things like complex surgeries then when it comes to general care you mainly need someone willing to confirm the safe treatments tested on that animal and the common sense to account for minor details but pest control and wound care is pretty universal. Horse treatment was applied to me as a child sometimes. I went to an amusement park with horse antiseptic cream covered in vet wrap one summer.

Predators always exist before you get prey animals and the second year will be spent on the ones you attracted that weren't already there along with the eventual rodents. We got rid of the coons, foxes, and dealt with stealing of chickens and great horned owls to be thwarted by a fishercat a few years after seriously getting into chickens with some I could never replace again. We actually went to rabbits because otherwise we'd have been looking at double fencing a big enough pen with hotwire and a top to have a chance at avoiding random monthly chicken slaughter and free ranging would always be an unknown risk with their unpredictable coverage of large territories. Let's put rabbits in a building instead... Then there's blocking rats from getting in cages or they'll eat your kits. Feeder gaps and flexible doors will let them in while mice and snakes will go through the bars but their damage is usually limited. Half eaten kits among screaming survivors that are certain you are the next thing to eat them is a terrible find. Everyone has something around and hopefully it's something simple. I would not trade for the people with bears. If you aren't putting them in a building at minimum you risk parts being pulled through the bars. Doubling up the wire with a gap to prevent weasel and coons reaching in, hot wire, and external fencing around cages are normal things people have to add when they find out what they've got around or really should add before they have to find out what damage can be done and treat missing toes with possibly a ruined show rabbit. Not that far north of here they run radios all night to deter the occasional mountain lion.